Quake: The Long Way Home
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: Even in the arenas of the elder gods, moments of humanity could still occur.


**The Long Way Home**

The man looked melem.

She'd considered the physical similarities long before the elder gods had forced them to do battle. He looked to be of the same species as hers, and she supposed that she looked to be the same species as him. As well as those other maniacs that prowled the arenas. In what little time was afforded to her to ponder the higher questions of the multiverse, she could only assume that it was natural. Perhaps there was a pinnacle form of sorts, that all evolution would favour across space and time. Two legs, two arms, two eyes, etc. Even the giant lizard creature conformed to that, not to mention the griess. Still, he, above all, had looked melem. Which was why she paused over his body, a shotgun in her arms, and a gaping wound in his chest.

"You got me," he said. He looked up at her, smiling faintly through bloodied teeth. "Nice shot."

They even spoke the same language – another quirk of the multiverse, or did the elder gods of the Outer Realms want their pawns to be able to communicate with each other? To fight and die in the knowledge that they could communicate, but such words would avail them nothing? If their goal was to torment their prey, then…She sighed, and slung her shotgun over her shoulders. Then it was working, damn it. Killing griess was easy. As in, hard to actually kill them, but the morality of it was a non-issue. Griess were evil, griess killed melem, and a griess had stolen the Dire Orb. This man looked melem, and was easily the least insane melemnoid in the arenas. A low bar, but a bar that existed nonetheless.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Ah, don't be," the man responded, between coughing up blood. "Kill or be killed. I've fought in an arena before."

"Do they have arenas in your world?"

She didn't know why she was asking this. The man would be dead soon, and before long, the gods would call on her to fight another combatant. But she stayed put, and waited for his answer.

"Once…long ago." He coughed up some more blood. "But it was a different arena…eternal…I enjoyed it before…" He sighed, blood trickling out of his mouth, and pouring out of his chest wound. "Before I sought to find my way home." He raised an arm and flailed it about clumsily, gesturing to the blood-soaked walls around them. "Guess this is my home now."

"I'm also trying to find my way home," Nyx said. She knelt down in front of him, and looked into his eyes. They were…haunted, she supposed. That was the first word that came to mind. Old as well, but they were the eyes of one who had seen more than even his years should allow for. She wondered how long he'd been trying to get home.

"Twenty years…since the slipgate," he rasped. "And now…it ends…here."

 _Twenty years?!_

She didn't say anything, but given how he smiled at her, she suspected that the shock was clear in her eyes. If the man's race followed the social structure of the melem (and for all she knew it did), that would mean the warrior was in his forties. A bit old to be running around the arenas, and she herself was only 27. She'd fought the greiss for a decade, but still, she would still be young by the standards of her people. His people? She sighed. So much to know. So much denied to her by beings who derived amusement from suffering. She'd come here to retrieve the Dire Orb, and the only way she was going to get it was to play _their_ game. To be _their_ champion. She hated them, more than any of her foes. Well, almost. But not him. She watched as he pounded the floor, and something fell out of his armour shoulder armour. Tucked away beneath the dented yellow metal.

"Shit."

She picked it up. It was small and thin – a pictograph, she recalled the name as being. Not holographic like her own keepsake, but it served its purpose. It showed an adult female and young male of the man's species, though apart from their strange hair colour (brown and black), one could have mistaken them for melem. She turned it round to face the fallen warrior.

"Your family?" she asked.

He nodded, and stretched out a quivering arm. She handed him the picture. He smiled, before coughing, even more violently than before.

"They kept…me going," he rasped. "Through the realms, through the arenas, through this…place." He coughed again. "Thought…I would see them again. Thought…I could…get home to…them."

"I'm sorry," she said. She opened her mouth, to say that she too had a family. That she too hoped to return to her own world one day. But she didn't – his journey had ended before his time. He wouldn't want to hear about hers in what time remained. So instead she asked, "what are their names?"

"Their names…" He was now struggling to breathe. "Their names are…are…" He coughed again, blood now mixed with water, and the picture fell on the ground. "You know…I can't remember."

His head lolled to one side, and she knew that the warrior's time had ended. His spirit had left his body. She could only hope that it might reach his own world, and not be the food of higher, yet depraved beings. In silence, she stretched forth a hand, and closed his eyes. In silence, she placed the picture firmly in his hand.

It was funny, she reflected. He hadn't known his family's names, and she didn't know his. Some of the warriors in the arena called him "the Ranger" or "the marine." She didn't know what a marine was, and doubted that "Ranger" was anything more than a title. A ranger was someone who patrolled a piece of land, not one who travelled through it on a long road home. In silence, she reminded herself that she was Nyx, daughter of Noxus, warrior of the melem. She too had a journey. That moments like this would have to be few and far between if she were to get home. Lest she end up like the one before her.

So in silence, she rose to her feet, sparing one last look at the Ranger before departing.

In silence, she knew that more blood would coat these walls before this was all over.


End file.
